


sister's day

by Interconnected_3



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Confrontations, Family, Family Drama, Fluff, Other, Parental Loss AU, Sibling Bonding, Slow Build, Through the Ages time fic, a bit of angst, how the tanakas grew up together, mentions of abuse, saeko is a giant liar about her jobs and ryuu finds out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 16:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3417233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interconnected_3/pseuds/Interconnected_3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was five, she cut her hair, and kept cutting it. </p><p>Tanaka loves his big sister. Tall, cool, smart, dependable, and also the biggest liar he’s ever seen in his life. </p><p>Parental loss AU: On a certain May evening, Ryuunosuke finds an unfinished letter written to Saeko when he was six. To celebrate ‘Sister’s Day’, he decides to fill in the blanks in more ways than one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sister's day

 

When he was five, Saeko cut her hair for the first time.

He doesn’t remember seeing her with hair that had ever gone past her shoulders. Back then it was still long and pretty, just past her shoulders before she had dyed it blonde. Blonde suits her much more than any other colour, but it was brown at some point, in some strange period of time he has no memory of.

She was a complete mess when she came back from school that day, still in her gym clothes and covered head to toe in mud and dirt. Tanaka vaguely saw that her dark hair had been thrown all over her face in this wild tornado that mildly resembled a tumbleweed. She had stormed right past her mom, dad, and even Ryuu without saying a word, and slammed the bathroom door shut behind her angry figure.

The hot water was roaring, but when she finally stepped out, her parents were too shocked to even yell at her for using up everything in the boiler.

“What d’you think, Ryuu?” She’d put her hands on her hips and grinned proudly, raising a hand to flip at the uneven strands of hair floating above her shoulders in a messy bob. “Cool, huh?”

His eyes were wide as dinner plates. “Why’d you do that, Onee-chan? You looked good with long hair!”

“Nope, I’m changing my way of life!” Saeko declared, and he could almost feel the sparkles radiating off of her newly-found confidence. “Long hair’s a pain to work with. And if I wanna go back to long, all I have to do is wait until it grows back! We can take pictures and everything!”

“ _Coooooooool!”_ He’d squealed and only fueled her loud “ _Wa-ha-ha-ha_!” even further.

 

Four months later, the brown locks were back down to her shoulders. When he looks back on it now, it’s likely that she was hiding the bruise on her eye from him the best she could as she stood in her long black dress and him in his tiny tight suit that made him look like a monkey. They stayed in the bathroom together, hiding from their father’s acid-like words, and Ryuunosuke watched every strand of hair fall to the floor, heard every sound of the scissors snip together and close.

“Why’d you do that?” He quietly asked when she set the scissors down on the counter and stared straight at her reflection.

“Long hair’s a pain to work with.” Was the whispered reply.

When she was eleven, she cut her hair, and kept cutting it.

 

 

When he was six, his teacher told the class to make Mother’s Day cards.

Chatter filled the little classroom, full of colours and paper and crafts and a place that should have been fun. Each kid got a piece of nice, thick paper, sharpened pencils and crayons, construction paper, scissors, and glue sticks. And while childish giggles and comparisons of mothers were exchanged, Tanaka simply kept his hands in his lap and stared long and hard at the materials on the tiny table in front of him while listing the crayon colours in his head as his eyes darted back and forth between them.

Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Black. Brown. Orange. Red. Yellow. Blue. Purple. Green. Black. Brown. Orange.

A good twenty minutes had passed like that until Yukino-sensei knelt down next to him and asked with her eyes full of concern and sickly sweet perfume, “What’s wrong, Tanaka-kun? Do you know what to write?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll bet.” She hummed and played with a lock of her curled hair, putting on a thoughtful expression. “There are lots of things you could write for your mother, after all. You can thank her for making delicious meals every night, or for doing your laundry, or just for being your mother! You can tell her all sorts of wonderful things, and I’m sure she’ll be happy with it. We’ll think of something to write together, okay?”

He cocked his head and grabbed a red crayon in his small fist, turning to say right at her with an innocent face:

“But I don’t have a mom.”

It was surprising to him that Yukino-sensei had required so little explanation besides that.

So instead, the both of them renamed May 10th “Sister’s Day” for Tanaka.

 

 

When he was seven, he got made fun of for holding Saeko’s hand when she walked him to school.

He can still remember what they said: asking if she had cooties, saying that he was too old to be tagging onto his sister’s hand, what a baby he must be because he must have peed himself on the way there and needed to cry into her skirt.

Of course, he tackled them all and ended up in time-out for half an hour, but he didn’t see what was so wrong with it. Saeko was the only person who made him feel safe, and her hands were big and strong, yet thin at the same time. There wasn’t anything so wrong with holding her hand, right? She would be the one to initiate it in the first place, since she’d be squeezing his fingers and swinging their arms back and forth while whistling a little tune as they crossed the street.

It was only natural that after they made it past the first crossing, Saeko realized something was wrong when his hand slipped out of hers and instead grabbed at the straps of his red randoseru backpack.

“Hey, what’s that all about?” She chuckled but quickly frowned when he shrugged away when she tried to reach for it again. “Ryuu? You okay?”

“Yeah, ‘course! I’m fine!” He stomped ahead of her despite knowing she’d catch up in two steps.

“Don’t play that card on me! C’mon, what’s wrong? You usually aren’t so picky about me holdin’ your hand, what’s up all of a sudden? Don’t tell me you’ve got a girl you like and you can’t betray her!” She bopped her fist on the top of his head and blinked when he swatted it away irritably.

“I-I said I’m fine, just leave me alone!”

“Ah.” Saeko lightly hit her fist into her palm, and Ryuunosuke inwardly groaned since she’d obviously figured something out. She grinned. “Are you embarrassed that I hold your hand?”

His jaw fell open. “H-How’d you know?!”

She just laughed proudly and put her hands on her hips. “Of course I know! Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m Tanaka Saeko, I know everything about you, Ryuu! You’re an open book!”

“What?! I’m not a book!”

“Aw, don’t worry about what the other kids say.” She said lovingly as she rubbed his head. “I’ll hold your hand no matter how old you get.”

When she was thirteen, she somehow intimidated an entire group of second-graders in her middle school uniform with the scariest glare ever, which she then later taught to Ryuu as a defense mechanism.

 

 

When he was ten, he forgot how to spell ‘barbeque’ and lost the spelling bee.

It had happened pretty fast. There he was standing on the stage, shaking in his shoes from all the eyes on him, yet excited at the same time. He thought he would be so excited and so _ready_ for the competition against the other kids, but now everyone was watching him and his palms felt all sweaty and gross and the lights kept getting into his eyes.

“Okay, Tanaka-kun, could you please spell ‘barbeque’ for us?” The microphone was screeching when it was lifted to his mouth, and he clenched at the legs of his shorts over and over again before confidently shouting out and creating even more feedback in the auditorium:

**_“BEE-BEE-KYEW!”_ **

He was very astonished and then later incredibly embarrassed when the entire audience broke out into laughter that rung around the room and slapped him in the head. But in the midst of his humiliation, someone in the middle rows stood up and started clapping and whooping and honestly Tanaka barely even had to look to know who it was.

“ _Whoooooooooooooooo!_ Look at that, everyone, that’s my awesome little brother! Look at him, I’m so proud!” Saeko was pumping her fist and screamed from the audience, making several spectators mumble in confusion and stare at the local embarrassment called his older sister. His cheeks nearly burned off from how hot they were.

At that point, there was nothing left for him to do but sulk and disappear from the stage, behind the curtain and relieved nobody would look at him anymore.

“Oh, you’re overreacting! You know what? It’s the weekend now, so nobody will even remember your goof-up when you go back to school.” Saeko laughed and squeezed his smaller hand as they walked down the sunset-covered sidewalk back home with ice cream in their free ones. She caved and bought him a double fudge cone as a reward, and a home run ice cream bar for herself.

“Yeah, right! Everyone’s gonna remember for the rest of their lives, and I will too when I die!” Ryuunosuke fired back weakly, biting angrily at his ice cream.

“I keep telling ya, don’t worry about it! I’m just glad that you tried, Ryuu.” Her voice suddenly took on a more sincere tone, making him look up in surprise. “You almost made it past the prelims, y’know! That’s a great achievement! Plus that means that you’re doing good in school, right? That’s what’s most important to me.”

He bit his lip, not having the heart to tell her that he stole the answer key to the spelling test and wrote the words on his wrist, so he worked a little harder in school after that to live up to how proud she was.

 

 

When he was ten, his dad left.

He was too young to completely understand what was going on, but all he remembered was that his dad always looked sad. Too old for someone only in his forties, too tired for someone who never even worked, too angry for someone who had nothing to be mad at but himself.

Tanaka never liked how his dad reacted to things, or even just took up space in their apartment. He’d listen from behind his door and hands half-covering his ears at his father and Saeko screaming at each other, Saeko always telling him to ‘get a hold of himself’ and that ‘you can’t leave behind the only things you’ve ever known’ and ‘I can take care of Ryuu just fine on my own, you piece-of-crap father’. 

He saw. She’d try to hide them, but he saw. There wasn’t any point in hiding it when he could hear the sounds of skin being slapped quite clearly, usually followed after his dad raised his voice to the point where he could nearly feel the windows rattling. Welts and purple bruises just shades away from her eyeshadow without her being the one to have applied it stood out on her cheeks and shoulders, sometimes her eyes. It started to scare him that the taller he got, the clearer he could see them.

The one thing everything completely exploded was later in the year. Even the younger of the siblings couldn’t remember much about it, since he had slipped out of the apartment and ran aimlessly around town to find Noya and returned home to hear his sister crying in the shower. It was one of the first times he’d ever heard her cry and afterwards they sat on the kitchen floor eating a tub of rocky road ice cream together in silence. Her makeup was still smudged but he didn’t have the heart to point it out.

What he remembers most, though, is his father’s room being completely empty and ransacked, the lopsided and shoved couch, the fallen lamp, and suitcases and papers all over the floor.

When she was sixteen, she became a high school dropout to support her family full-time.

 

 

When he was fourteen, Noya got a job at an okonomiyaki restaurant as a waiter and a busser.

After he told Saeko that, she whistled. “Ooh, nice. That one near the karaoke place? Didn’t think he’d actually land it!”

Ryuunosuke chuckled at that. “Hey, come on, even Noya can keep a job for a week. He’s still going strong.”

“Hmmm. We should go sometime.” His sister lazily suggested from where she tapped away on her laptop.

“Don’t you have work all this week?” He raised an eyebrow and clicked his pencil against his English homework. “Why not take a day off?”

“Can’t, the boss is really strict about this week’s shifts. I’m the only one who can regularly work, so he’s gonna be a total slave-driver until my co-workers are available, right? Tch! Damn that baldy!” She squeezed her eyes shut and popped her lollipop back into her mouth in annoyance.

“A desk job as a secretary ain’t that heavy, is it?” The younger smiled wryly. “Maybe it’s about time I started workin’ too, you know? Help out with the bills, shopping, all that.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa, no!” Saeko suddenly sat up straight from her lying position on the couch, shoving past a chair to cross her arms in front of Ryuunosuke at the kitchen table. “No way’s that happening. I won’t allow it.”

“What? Why _not_?” He asked with disbelief lacing his voice, leaning his forearm on the table. “You’re working your ass off non-stop for a single job all week, and you barely get a day off! We’re family, aren’t we? I gotta do my share of the work too!”

“I’m tellin’ you that doesn’t matter!” Her voice almost rose to a shout, and he flinched when she slammed her hands on the table and made his water spill over the edge of his mug. “You’re fourteen, Ryuu! You’re about to go into high school, you’ve gotta focus on studying for entrance exams!”

“Hah? But Noya-”

“Who cares about Noya? This is about you!” Saeko cut him off sharply before sighing and trying to calm herself down by running a hand through her bleached hair. She exhaled slowly. “Look, I can handle things just fine on my own. I’ll manage to pay this month’s rent and sort out the money for both of us, promise. Just… don’t go getting a job just yet. This is an important time for you and I want you to work hard.”

“That’s what you always say.” He grumbled under his breath, harshly standing up to get a cloth for the spilt water. “Why’re you telling me what to do about studying? You dropped out of high school!”

“My god, it’s _because_ I dropped out of high school, Ryuu.” She rubbed her face in exasperation and suddenly looked as though she were in immense pain just by having this conversation. “Point is, you’re too young to be gettin’ a job and you already do a lotta housework around here. I’ve got everything under control, so just focus on studying. Stay a kid a while longer, is all I’m saying.”

 _Mom’s dead and Dad’s gone, how is that possible,_ he almost said but managed to keep it down his throat as he wiped off the water from the table, steering it away from his homework. His head still felt hot until Saeko wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him in for a loose hug.

“What now,” He groaned.

“You grew up to be a good kid, Ryuu.” Saeko’s unexpected affection made him heat up in embarrassment. “I’m proud. Always thinking of your family first. But don’t worry, just leave it all to me. You’re my little brother, and you’re all I’ve got left.”

“Same to you, sap.” Ryuunosuke tried not to say it too flatly, but ended up smiling anyway.

“If you really feel that bad about it, pay me back tenfold when you’re a doctor or a dentist or a professional volleyball player!” She kissed him right on the cheek and waltzed off to the bathroom.

“If you’re gonna shower, ten minutes!” He called.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” She yelled back, and he sighed. She’d definitely take a fifteen minute anyway.

When she was twenty, she learned to be happy about the littler things, like being with her brother or watching a good movie or finding some cute clothes for a great deal and paying the bills on time and taking thirty-minute showers.

 

 

When he was fifteen, he found out the truth.

“Hey, Tanaka. You’ve got a sister, right?”

It was a normal day during his lunch break, but some guy in his class called Mizutani had walked up to his desk just to suddenly ask.

Tanaka took another bite of melon bread and answered with his mouth full: “Yeah, why?”

He brought his hand up to his head. “She’s got short blonde hair, piercings and stuff, right? She’s really cool, I think I saw her around school before.”

“And?”

“D-Does she work at the movie theater regularly?” He could see a thinly-veiled ulterior motive to catch a glimpse of a pretty girl (the blush on his face gave it away), but a second later he realized what was wrong.

His face contorted in confusion. “What? No, she’s a secretary at the eye doctor’s office, takes phone calls and stuff. It’s a full-time thing.”

“Are we talking about Tanaka’s sister?” Yoshitake popped his head out to join. “If you’re asking about her, I saw her wiping windows near the Foothill Store yesterday, I think.”

“The hell’re you guys saying?” A strange feeling started to twist his stomach and crushed his appetite to pieces. “My sister’s got a full-time job in an office, she’s not just going around doing random shit! You sure you guys seen this girl properly?”

In a matter of seconds the majority of the class was talking about the “bleached bob hair, piercings, leather jacket, backpack, big-chested girl around town”, and all he could do was cover his mouth and run to the bathroom just in case he threw up everything he’d eaten since that morning.

He nearly did.

The next day, he skipped school.

When they both parted at the train station and Saeko pulled on her cap and backpack over her usual leather jacket, she waved and hopped on. Through the rush hour of pedestrians flooding inside the cars, he followed.

 _It can’t be_ , he told himself over and over as his fingernails curled into his palms. _Everything’s fine, right? You have everything under control like you always say you do, right? We can make this month’s rent, right? We’ll still be able to have Pizza Saturdays every weekend, right? You’re not lying about having a steady job to support us, right?_

_You’re not lying to me, right?_

He bit his lip when the train car passed the street of the doctor’s office.

The bustle of the city wasn’t nearly enough to drown out the desperate thoughts running all around his head. It was easy to hide, easy to stay out of her view, but he just wouldn’t stop sweating and his whole body felt like a giant block of lead.

9 AM. Window washing near the Foothill Store.

11 AM. Grocery shopping.

12 PM. Bussing at the food court.

2 PM. Dish washing at a tiny restaurant on the corner of the street.

5 PM. Scanning items at a supermarket.

She looked exhausted, and yet she smiled at every single customer she greeted. Inside, so was he. It felt like his entire world had suddenly stopped spinning, the gears just grinding to a halt as the truth hit him like a ton of bricks. Why? Why, why, why?

He asked himself, but he knew why.

Because of him.

Saeko was working so hard, telling him to focus on his studies and that there was no need for him to help, just to support them. It was like everything fell into place in the span of a few hours.

She always laughed and shook her head when he was younger and offering her a spoon of fried rice from his takeout. How many nights had she gone to sleep with an empty stomach?

She was always apologizing for coming home so late with an array of reasons, the staff meeting ran late, they had a drinking party and she had to take them home on her motorbike, I just had overtime and guess who’s getting double pay. How many shifts of all those different jobs had she been sitting through?

He didn’t need to ask himself why. The answer was the most obvious one he could have ever arrived at.

And in the next few seconds as the sun sank below the horizon, hot tears spilled over his cheeks and pathetic sobs escaped his bitten, chapped lips.

He managed to wipe off the remnants of his shock from his face until he got home, flicking on the lights to their apartment again. For some reason it looked so dark, mean, and emptier than usual without Saeko there. Knowing that she was pouring in hours and exerting endless amounts of energy just to keep this place made him angry, for some reason. It was a stupid thing to get mad at. But he wished that there was someone else to be angry towards, and so there he was catching himself cursing the couch and that lamp and the carpet that hadn’t been washed in years.

Ryuunosuke nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone started ringing, and he knew right away that there was only one person who it could be. Too tired to even move, he let the obnoxious ringing continue until the answering machine switched on.

 _“Hey, Ryuu? I guess you’re not back from practice yet. Looks like I’ve got an extra shift to work tonight!”_ She laughed. _“Yep, it’s the usual over here. I’ll probably be back at around two or three, so go get yourself something to eat, alright? Oh, wait, actually, I think I left some potato salad in the fridge! Go eat up and study, got it? And don’t forget to take a shower. Ten minutes- ah, wait, you probably know all that already, you’re usually the one to remind me of that, aren’t cha?”_

There. There it was again. The sobs. The shaking of his chest. The boiling hot tears crawling down his face and the nails cutting into his palms.

_“I think I might get a day off next week, though, so let’s hit that okonomiyaki place together on the weekend or something, yeah? I’ll see ya in the morning, Ryuu. Bye.”_

Before he could even do anything, the machine cut off and all the strength completely drained out of his legs. His knees hit the ground with a painful thud, leaving him to curl forward and dig his forehead into the floorboards. The tears trailed up his eyelids and fell to his hands, every piece of emotion overflowing with guilt.

“Sorry…” He choked out over and over again. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, Nee-chan, I’m so sorry…”

When he was fifteen, at that moment in time, there was nobody he hated in the world more than himself.

 

 

When he was sixteen, he found the letter he never finished.

It had happened when he got home from volleyball practice, and after he took a shower he went back into his room to start on his homework. When he opened the drawers of his desk to look for a random pencil, there was a single sheet of crumpled-up paper lying in the bottom one.

He raised an eyebrow. He never remembered leaving anything in there.

He unfolded it anyway and nearly stopped breathing.

It was that piece of thick paper all the way back in elementary school, the one all the kids got to write their Mother’s Day cards on. Come to think of it, in the end he never finished it and gave it to Saeko. His absolutely horrible crayon writing was still smudged on the paper, but still legible:

_May 9, 2005_

_To: onee-chan_

_she is pretty and smart and kool_

_she alwayz helps me with homewerk_

_shee is very tall and brave_

_i luv onee-chan_

He stared at the paper in disgust with a twitching eye. “What the hell was I thinking when I wrote this…?!”

Ryuunosuke stares at the paper for a good, long minute, nearly re-enacting the scene from when it was still blank. Fists on his knees, glowering at it like it was a dead bug or a bowl of mushrooms. He should throw it out. He really should. There’s not much point in keeping it; why did he in the first place?

But then he throws a glance at the calendar hanging beside his bed and there’s only three days until Sister’s Day.

He never told Saeko that he renamed the holiday for her, and Mother’s Day was just like any other day for them for the past sixteen years of his life. But since it had all come down to this and he still had been feigning ignorance to her multitude of occupations… Why wouldn’t he finish it?

“Alright. I got this. I’m gonna do it.” Tanaka mumbled to himself as he rummaged around for a pencil, suddenly feeling spurred on by a strange determination and urge to spill everything out onto the mostly-blank page. “I’m gonna do it.”

“I’m gonna do this!” He yelled a tad too loudly when he finally closed his fingers around a mechanical pencil he’d borrowed from Kageyama, and raised his arm confidently to prepare to write the angriest, most confrontational words he’d ever write in his entire life-

Only to find that when his hand touched the paper the pencil wouldn’t move.

“Dammit, ** _WHYYYYYYYYYYYY?!_** ” He slapped his hands to his head and rubbed furiously as if to massage his brain back into action, but nothing worked. After ten more minutes of angry brainstorming, he slammed his forehead on the desk with a huge groan.

Yeah, he knew why after all.

How the _hell_ do you start a letter asking why she was such a liar about everything, yet sound appreciative at the same time? 

He kicked back in his chair and sighed at the ceiling. Maybe it would be better to focus on one thing instead of the other.

So after thoroughly slapping his face until both cheeks were bright red, he put the pencil to the paper and waited for the words to come out on their own.

 

Ryuunosuke was a nervous wreck for the days to come until Sister’s Day. He stayed up until three to finish the letter and dove into bed the second he heard Saeko’s keys unlock the front door and showed up to school and practice the next day yawning non-stop.

“Guys! Opinions please!” He slapped his cheeks again and smacked his hand onto the whiteboard in the clubroom the day before the fated night. The board read in his messy writing, “ _Deb8 Topic: What Should I Do For Sister’s Day????_ ”

“You could at least spell ‘debate’ properly.” Daichi sighed and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Don’t you mean Mother’s Day, though?” Yamaguchi asked thoughtfully.

“You’re naïve, Yamaguchi! For me, it’s Sister’s Day!” Tanaka boomed and pointed his black market at him. “Anyone got any suggestions for what I should do to celebrate? Saeko’s comin’ back early from work tomorrow night, so I have until after practice to make something great!”

Sugawara raised his hand and spoke after Tanaka called on him. “Most people clean up the house, or make dinner, something like that, right? I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”

“Well, I could…” The wing spiker groaned and rubbed his head in thought. “But I clean up and make meals most of the time anyway. I don’t know what I should do to make the night really _special_ for her, y’know?”

“Ooh, ooh!” Hinata shot his hand up into the air and waved with a galaxy sparkling in his brown eyes. “Why don’t you take her to that action movie you really wanted to see with Noya-san? ‘Vampire Ninja Carmilla Saizo’?”

“Idiot, that’s the one Noya wanted to watch!” Ryuunosuke turned his chin away in disappointment. “Even if we went, he’d just be flyin’ up in the air screaming ‘ _coooooool_ ’ at everything!” 

Tsukishima scoffed not-so-subtly into his fist. “How obnoxious.”

“Dammit, Tsukishima, what’d you sayyyyyyyyy?!” Nishinoya screamed and pounced on him in an attempt to rip his glasses off.

“What kind of food does Saeko-neesan like?” Kageyama asked.

Tanaka then proceeded to scream and run right out of the clubroom, kicking up a cloud of dust as he ran to catch the train home.

He could barely hear his teammates yelling after him:

“T-Tanaka, where’re you going?!”

“You’re gonna fall!”

“Tanaka-senpai!”

“Ryuuuuuuuuuu!”

“What an idiot.”

Not that the last one mattered, because he had the best idea ever and had to start it right away.

 

It was perfect. Everything was going to be perfect.

So he kept telling himself, but the tempura was so slippery and squeezed out of his chopsticks on more than one occasion and kept flying all over the place-

“D-Dammit-” He fumbled around as he dipped the shrimp in the batter and carefully dropped it into the fryer. It wasn’t like tempura was difficult to make, but it was his first time he’d felt so pressured to do so. To be honest, he was glad that nobody could see him right now, looking so clumsy and absolutely ridiculous in Saeko’s polka-dotted apron. As he waited for the last shrimp to fry, he shifted his weight from foot to foot and whistled a little tune to himself- the club’s favorite song, _Tenchi Gaeshi_. He should have put it on while he was waiting.

His hands felt sweaty and he wiped them on the apron quickly as he looked over to the kitchen table. He’d hastily cleaned up the whole house after practice, even setting up a breaking vase with a fake flower in it to try to set the mood properly. In front of it was a single envelope; her biggest gift today.

He gingerly picked up the steaming plate of fried shrimp and set it down next to the envelope, crouching down and squinting at it and adjusting it so that it would look _just_ right with the light when she came in. Ryuunosuke hurriedly slipped off the apron and patted his clothes down, feeling his heart start to ricochet around his ribs. He bit his lip and looked at the white envelope. Maybe he should just hide it after all, it wasn’t anything so important she needed to see, right?

 _No, no, no, no, no,_ he shook his head over and over as he flung that thought right out of his head. He’d already come this far, he couldn’t back out now.

Just as he was leading himself through some breathing exercises, the front door unlocked and he nearly shrieked.

“Hey, Ryuu, I’m home-”

“H-H-Happy Sister’s Daaaaaaaaaaaay!”

A very strange and very awkward silence hung in the air, filled with Ryuunosuke’s light panting after that one scream had ripped all the air out of his lungs. Saeko just blinked with her eyes wide, and her motorbike helmet almost fell out of her hand.

“W-What the hell’s all this about?” She closed the door behind her and stepped inside, looking around the house. “Whoa, you cleaned up. Is that tempura? Aw, Ryuu, you didn’t!” Her entire face brightened, and at that moment he thought all this would be worth it.

“W-Well, yeah. It’s May 10th. Sister’s Day for you. Wanted to clean up, make dinner for once.” He mumbled, moving out of the way so she could sit down.

She clasped her hands together in excitement, eyes sparkling. “Holy crap, this looks amazing! I’m impressed!” When her gaze landed on the envelope, she cocked her head. “What’s this?”

“A-Ahhhhh, wait wait wait!” The younger sibling snatched it right off the table, making her yelp in surprise. “There’s something I gotta tell you first.”

“Yeah? Go ahead.” She just smiled and leaned her chin into her hand, waiting patiently for him to speak and without warning his stomach started twisting itself into knots.

He swallowed down the lump in his throat. He hadn’t rehearsed for this at all…! But still. For the past five years, he had to say something.

“U-Uh,” He stuttered out, grabbing at the hem of his shirt. “S-So… you’ve always been pickin’ up the slack since Dad left, yeah? So today, since it’s Sister’s Day for us… I wanted to, uh… t-thank you. Yeah. For everything.”

His teeth gnashed together. That wasn’t what he wanted to say at all. Saeko must have noticed how pained he looked.

“Ryuu? You okay-”

“Why you always gotta be like that?!” He burst out, feeling the hot tears prick at his eyes again as he slammed his hands onto the table. “You always act like it’s none of my business, you never say what’s important, you think you’ve got everything under control and all you ever do is worry about me!” He was stuttering more and more. His cheeks were burning. “Would it kill you to trust me a little more, dammit?! We’re siblings! Weren’t you the one who said I’m the only one you’ve got left?!”

“R-Ryuu, what are you-” She stood up to face him, but the words kept spilling out on their own. Ungracefully, clumsily, like he was trying to make the sentences click but couldn’t.

“How long were you planning on hiding it?” He had to try extremely hard not to start shouting again, but his temper was starting to make his blood boil. “I knew. I knew for the past year that you’ve been workin’ all these different jobs. I knew that your job as a secretary was just a giant lie. Why’d you do that? How could you do that without feelin’ a thing? Huh?”

Saeko didn’t even look mad, just utterly and sincerely shocked. Then, she laughed a little, and rubbed the back of her neck with a wry smile. Her gaze dropped to her feet.

“Ah. Yeah, I figured you’d find out soon enough.” She looked up, and his knees went weak at the sight of tears beginning to gather at the corners of her eyes despite her smile. “Damn… when’d you go and grow up on me, Ryuu?”

 “…I wanted an explanation, dammit.” He choked out, and wiped his tears off with an arm.

“Sorry. I really am.” She said softly. “I wanted to tell you, but it just never felt _right_ , y’know?” Her grin grew wider. “Feels like there’s something off my chest now. All I wanted to do was watch you grow up in peace, but I guess that wasn’t possible, huh?”

“To be honest, there probably wasn’t anything wrong with continuing on like this. Stupid of me, yeah?” She sniffed and brushed away a tear with two fingers. “Sorry, Ryuu. I’m sorry for bein’ selfish. You’re my little bro, I thought it was my job to protect you.”

“Two can play at that game, bastard.” Ryuunosuke muttered, but he still meekly smiled at her. “One last thing.” He held out the envelope to her.

When she unfolded the letter inside, her eyes widened and started brimming with tears again.

_May 9, 2005_

_To: onee-chan_

_she is pretty and smart and kool_

_she alwayz helps me with homewerk_

_shee is very tall and brave_

_i luv onee-chan_

_May 8, 2015_

_To: Onee-chan_

_Sorry about my fucked-up spelling, six-year-old me had no idea what he was doing._

_I don’t think my opinion’s changed all that much since then, though._

_She’s pretty and smart and cool. She always helps me with homework, even if she can’t do the hard algebra questions all that well. She’s tall and brave and always picks up the slack where I can’t. She’s the most selfless person I’ve ever had in my life._

_And she’s a liar._

_She lies about being hungry. She lies about having money and she lies about having a stable job. I’m sure that if I weren’t around, she could get on just fine, but she always thinks about me and never about herself. I hate that. I want to do more. I want to help her._

_But I love her._

_Happy Sister’s Day, you sap._

Ryuunosuke could tell she was done reading it when she looked up at him with her hand over her mouth and tears streaming down her face and the paper shaking.

He wasn’t sure if he should have been happy or apologetic to be the reason behind those tears. He’d always thought that he would do anything to keep his sister from crying, and yet these quiet sobs of hers didn’t make him feel guilty.

If anything, he was waiting for them.

“Wait, last thing, I promise.” He pulled out another envelope from his pocket, and could have sworn he heard her gasp when he started to remove numerous bills from it. “I helped around the Foothill Store and karaoke places wherever I could. Sorry I didn’t tell you till today.”

“Uh,” He coughed and slid five bills onto the table. “This is this month’s rent.”

“This’s for that nail polish you said you wanted.”

“This’s for that leather jacket you keep complaining about.”

“This’s so you can buy a new laptop charger.”

“Bath soap, makeup, whatever, you can buy it all with this.”

So by the end of it all, the table was covered in tears, a vase with fake flowers, money, and a plate of tempura.

He ended up having to hold Saeko while she was sobbing like a baby for at least ten minutes. She threw her arms around his neck and dropped the letter on the floor, her tears getting all over his cheek and neck as she cried.

“Ryuu,” She kept saying in between her sobs, “Ryuu… Thanks. Thank you. I’m the happiest girl in the world right now. I’m so happy.”

“Well, you said that if I felt bad to pay you back, right?” He laughed into her shoulder and rubbed her back, feeling his eyes sting and his emotions overflow again. “But I couldn’t wait until I was a doctor or a dentist or a professional volleyball player. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing, you little brat!” Her words were all slurred in a wail. “I love you too, Ryuu!”

“For the love of…” He trailed off with darkened cheeks and held her tight in the dim light of their shared, little, broken apartment. Shared, little, and broken, but still theirs.

“Happy Sister’s Day, you sap.”

**Author's Note:**

> whOA LOOK AT THIS MONSTER  
> i watched a video on tumblr of something similar to this and i ended up crying so i thought "hEY LET'S THROW IN THE TANAKA SIBLINGS FOR THAT THAT'D BE A GREAT IDEA"  
> to be honest i'm not sure if i have all their personalities down pat yet but this was really good practice for me! i hope that if you're reading this and read all the way to the end, this touched you at least a little bit bc i'm such a sucker for the tanakas omg ;;  
> if you liked it please please let me know, it would mean the world to me!!


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